Opening Gambit
“If I had seen farther than other men, it is because I have been standing upon the shoulders of giants.”- Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
Did you know that a child who once played around the royal native courtyard of his father, finally found his true place and task in the administration of justice right from 1936 when he was admitted into the Attorney-General's office in the Lagos Secretariat up until 1st June 1958 when he arrived on the Bench of the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of the Federation of Nigeria, an office he occupied for a whole fourteen years? Indeed, the highly influential mediaeval, constitutional and ecclesiastical historian, Dr. William Stubbs (1825-1901), who was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, was dead right when he proclaimed that “the roots of the present lie deep in the past,” to prove the point that most men remain true to their early environment.
A staunch defender of the supremacy or rule of law, Sir Adetokunbo Adegboyega Ademola, CFR, KBE, PC, GCON (1906-1993), eminent jurist, Chairman of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs from its inception in 1961 to 1971 when the Federal Government assumed its control, former patron of the Nigerian Olympic Committee whose commendable role resolved the 1972 Pre-Olympic crisis, former Chairman of the National Census Board that conducted the 1973 national census, former president of the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity found in 1914, distinguished social elite, astonishingly sociable person, foundation member of Nigeria's premier social club - the Island Club which was founded in 1943, former chairman of the Metropolitan Club Lagos, and former vice patron of the Yoruba Tennis Club –“Greetings!”, was a man of unique talent and great personal achievements.
Here, one could not but quickly recall some other foundation members of Island Club like politician, nationalist, pioneering journalist and former president of the Nigerian Youth Movement Ernest Sissei Ikoli (1893-1960), Anglican Bishop, Rt. Rev. Adelakun Howells (1905-1963), and politician, statesman, former Minister of Health and Minister of Information Chief Ayotunde Rosiji (1917-2000), O.A. Omololu and J.K. Randle to name but a few – men who then formed the cream of Lagos society.
At that time, trade flourished; the Regions were only recently created and Nigeria ran as smooth as skate on ice, as it witnessed the establishment of new posts for civil servants of all categories; the setting up of various industrial organizations, their wares were well made and got off well to market. Indeed, at the peak of the boom, it was recorded that the Marketing Board of one of the Regions bagged a whopping 40-million pound surplus!
Moreover, successive constitutional changes were witnessed in the period 1953-1958. Chief among them was the establishment of the Public Service Commission, and later the Judicial Service Commission; and during this same period Nigeria enjoyed ultimate control of the Police. It was at the Constitutional Conference of 1957-1958 in London that the last changes in the Nigerian Constitution before Independence were reached. Being most vital, and reaching such a pitch in 1958, the Willink Commission was set up under British Conservative politician and academic administrator Sir Henry Willink (1894-1973). The commission recommended the establishment of an Edo Council – the forerunner of the former “Fourth Region” that later became known as Midwestern State of Nigeria, was put in place to tackle the problem of “minorities.”
Significantly, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which then comprised twelve members from each Region, irrespective of population or size, with four members from the Federal Territory of Lagos, and another four specially appointed, was also created in 1958. The idea being to neutralize the numerical imbalance in the House of Representatives using parity of representation between the Regions. In practice, it failed to achieve the desired effect because like the British House of Lords, the Senate could only delay legislation but could not prevent its passage. Therefore, this inequality existing between the Regions became a constant source of irritation and ever growing dissatisfaction.
Such was the socio-political situation in Nigeria when Sir Adetokunbo, eldest son of King Ladapo Samuel Ademola II (1872-1962), paramount leader and Alake of the Egba clan who reigned in Abeokuta, a historic walled city of the Egbas in south-western Nigeria, became the CJN in 1958. King Ladapo had in the early 1900s accompanied his uncle, the late King Gbadebo, then Alake of Abeokuta, on a historic visit to England, which made Gbadebo the first Nigerian native ruler to visit England. The visit was sponsored by the Governor, Sir William McGregor GCMG, CB (1826-1919), and the party was received by King Edward VII (1841-1910) in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace in London.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismark (1815-1898) pinpointed prescience; the ability to look ahead intuitively and clearly, and to act accordingly, as the most decisive thing in modern life? In fact, University of Exeter's Dr. Louise Hill, a lecturer in Public Administration, once put it more accurately:
”From games to government, foresight is the most important factor of all.”
King Ademola, a man of uncommon foresight had, “at a time when there were few lawyers in the country, agreed that his son should seek his future in the administration of law, notwithstanding the comparatively low income which that situation then involved.” Since the period of his headship of the Judiciary (1958) was very close to Nigerian Independence (1960), many aspects of public life were more or less in a state of flux, like the revised Constitution, the new Parliament, and the National Executive Council; but the organic unity of the judiciary had been firmly established. There was but one judiciary, and one rule of law despite the many divisions of the High Court and various types of courts. A cardinal feature of the Nigerian Judicial system which has endured throughout its history and continued beyond the crisis into our time. Appeals have always stemmed from the decision of the lower Courts to the High Courts, and to the Supreme Court ultimately being the highest judicial tribunal of the land.”
The first Nigerian solicitor to the Supreme Court of Nigeria (1943), Minister for Local Government Western Region (1954-1958), Minister for Justice Western Region (1958-1960), and President of the Nigerian Bar Association (1959), Chief F.R.A Williams, a.k.a Timi the Law, QC, SAN (1920-2005), once wrote concerning Sir Adetokunbo, the first African to be appointed a Bencher of the Middle Temple in London:
“So long as counsel did his homework properly he had very little to fear from Sir Adetokunbo. If he was a very new comer to the profession he was encouraged and given a sympathetic hearing, as I was when in my very early days at the bar I conducted a difficult private prosecution, (which deservedly failed), before Sir Adetokunbo who was then the Magistrate in charge of Warri in Western Nigeria in 1944.”
Who will dispute the solid background against which the former CJN's life was set? A product of St Gregory's Grammar School Obalende, King's College Lagos and Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, where he studied law from 1928 to 1931. He married the first black female undergraduate at Oxford University Lady Kofo Ademola (b.1915), a Nigerian educationist, prolific author of children's literature, principal, cofounder of the New Era Girls' Secondary School, Lagos, and daughter of the late Eric Olaolu Moore, first Lagos member of the United nations committee of experts advising on labour conventions and regulations. History will forever remain kind to Moore and Egerton-shyngle for the role both men played in cases against the Secretary, Southern Nigeria, on the issues of native land tenure and customary law.
Sir Adetokunbo, who had sailed to England from Lagos on 3rd June 1927; the birthday of King George V (1865-1936), then a public holiday in Nigeria, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, London in 1934. After returning to Nigeria, he worked from 1934-35 as crown counsel at the then Attorney- General's Office, then for a year as assistant secretary at the southern secretariat in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria. From 1936, Sir Adetokunbo practiced until 1939, when he was appointed Magistrate of the protectorate Court. In 1949 he became the third Nigerian to be appointed a Pusine Judge. In 1948, he served as a member of the commission for the revision of court legislation.
As an opening gambit in 1955, a year before Western Nigeria became internally self-governing, Sir Adetokunbo, whom Rotimi Williams described as “a shinning example of a judge who talked very little on the bench and interrupted only when it was absolutely necessary,” was appointed Chief Justice for Western Nigeria, thus becoming the first Nigerian head of the judiciary anywhere in Nigeria. But then, didn't English Judge Francis Bacon (1587-1657) say:
“an over-speaking Judge is no grace to the Bench?”
In fact, the 7th Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales (1922-1940), Gordon Hewart PC, KC (1870-1943), spoke in clearly the same the mood:
“the business of a Judge is to hold his tongue until the last possible moment, and try to be as wise as he ought to look.”
Sir Adetokunbo's string of 'firsts' continued when, three years later, he became the first Nigerian Chief Justice of the entire Federation of Nigeria and also the last Chief Justice of the Federation to be appointed by the Governor-General on the instructions of Her Majesty through a Secretary of State.
Sir Adetokunbo, along with his successor as Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dr. Taslim Olawale Elias (1914-1991), was instrumental in the establishment of the Nigerian Law School. It is important to note here that prior to its establishment, legal practitioners in Nigeria had had to qualify at the English Bar.
First knighted in January, 1957, appointed one of Queen Elizabeth II's Privy Councilors in 1963, and later that year, awarded a KBE, Sir Adetokunbo, was also a member of the United Nations International Public Service Advisory Board, member of the International commission of Jurists, executive member of World peace through Law, vice president of the World Association of Jurists, President of the Nigerian Red Cross Association, Chairman of Nigeria Cheshire homes, and first Chancellor of the University of Benin.
From time immemorial, men become great by the causes they serve; Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived," gave us the law of gravity and nearly all in planetary theory; Byzantine Emperor Justinian (c. 482-565) commonly known as Justinian the Great, who during his reign (527-565), sought to revive the Empire's greatness and re-conquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire, compiled the selected writings of Jurists, which was enacted and is known today as the Codes of Roman Law; Pythagoras (ca. 570-ca. 490 BCE), one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, influenced the growth of mathematical demonstration; Charles Darwin, (1809-1882), an English naturalist who established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and whose modified scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President, who successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War (1861-1865), preserved the Union and ended slavery, and Sir Frederick Lugard (1858-1945), a British soldier, mercenary, explorer of Africa and colonial administrator, who was Governor of Hong Kong (1907–1912), and as Governor-General of Nigeria (1914–1919), amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria in 1914; Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965), a British Conservative politician and statesman, who is well known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century. So also our own Sir Adetokunbo Ademola is, above all, remembered for his leadership of the Nigerian Judiciary both at the joys of Independence, and in her darkest days of crisis (1967-1970).
But for Dr. Stubbs who said that “the roots of the present lie deep in the past,” to prove that most men remain true to their early environment as earlier mentioned, many would still be wondering how it came about that young Adetokunbo, who as a child joined the crowd to watch the pageantry of the law at the opening of the Lagos Assizes because his then abode on Broad Street which was only a stone's throw from the site of the old Supreme Court, came to finally serve the law. That seem logical, abi? What has, however, remained baffling is how a child raised in comfort, society and wealth, developed such conscious discipline, consistency of purpose, and a remarkable modesty.
Sir Adetokunbo was born on 1st February, 1906, on “a very rainy day” according to his father, Oba Ademola who ascended the throne of Egbaland as Alake of Abeokuta in 1920. Astrologers have maintained that the zodiacal constellation for that period of the year was Aquarius – a Latin word which means “water carrier.” No doubt, water is an important and primordial substance. In fact the Miles, a School of the Ancient World, held that philosophy began with Thales (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece, who said that everything is made of water. Many, most notably Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), and British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian and social critic, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), who at various points in his life considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, regard Thales as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. It is believed that some of the children of Aquarius (i.e. those born between 21st January and 19th February) are often among the pioneers who lead other men across the ocean of life. Equally, the records indicate that the great Chief Justice of England (1613-1629) during the Stuart period, Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), was also born on 1st February. What a significant coincidence!
Also, the birth of Sir Adetokunbo, whose views on specific judicial problems, for example: contempt of court; judicial reforms; the relationship between the Bench and the Bar, are well known, had closely followed his father's voyage to England, which explains the choice of the name – “Ade”- Crown and “Tokunbo”- Child from the sea. This seemed remarkable that the child was Aquarian both according to zodiac influences and the events in his family life at birth.
Lastly, unknown to those who criticized him for keeping mum when his brother was murdered sometime ago, the former CJN must be seen and understood for who he was; someone who, aside the fact that he had a keen sense of trusteeship and a great devotion to his family, also exemplified “passive habit and self-restraint,” which Welsh legal scholar Prof. Glanville Williams QC, FBA (1911-1997), described as “a fundamental feature of the English judicial scene.” To those who knew him only in his familiar role as a Judge, however, there is still one myth to be discovered about him, his life at home. He flourished more in private than in public. Remarkably, he was an unassertive person with a uniformly mild demeanor and ease of movement. He could not correctly be described as an orator; but there was much else in his vein. He achieved emphasis without raising his voice. His generous and responsive nature, his wit, his pleasant presence and compulsive smile – these were the hidden splendor known only to those who were privileged to come into contact with him, away from the Bench.” That apart Raynard Goddard (1877-1971), later Baron Goddard, 9th Chief Justice of England (1946-1958), “known for his strict sentencing and conservative views,” had reminded his generation that the High Court is a court both of law and equity. And in this context, one of the main principles of equity becomes relevant namely, “a person should not be a judge in his own cause.”